Windows 8 Samsung tablet hands-on video review

If our hands-on slideshow of Windows 8 Developer Preview wasn’t quite your thing, check out our video review below. We can now tell you that this tablet is a Samsung, Intel Core i5-powered tablet. It is 900 grams (2lbs) and about 13mm at its thickest point. The tablet, when it actually appears on the market later this year, will be powered b Windows 7 — but Microsoft worked with Samsung to get Windows 8 running on this particular device.

The video is quite long — 12 minutes or so — and in some parts it’s very obvious that I’m suffering from jetlag and no sleep, but it’s well worth watching for a realistic impression of the current state of Windows 8, and how the new Metro start screen interacts with old paradigms like the Explorer desktop, and new features like the right-menu “Charms” (we’re still not sure why they’re called Charms).

There are also a couple of sections where the screen isn’t very visible, but if you squint and zoom in you should be able to make out some basic shapes — and if you still can’t see, the high-res screenshots in our Windows 8 slideshow also fill in most of the gaps.

On the next page there are a few more photos of the tablet itself, including some close-ups of the ports and buttons on the side.

The tablet has an Intel second generation Core i5 (Sandy Bridge) processor, a 1366×768 11.6-inch dispay, 4GB RAM, and a 64GB SSD. It runs UEFI instead of a traditional BIOS and has a full range of ports including USB, microSD, HDMI, and ethernet. The tablet has built-in 3G connectivity and, as an added bonus for press and developers, includes one year of AT&T service.

Nice to finally see Microsoft joining the tablet wars. I just hope they can compete on price and performance.

Anonymous

Joining? They started it over 10 years ago…

Anonymous

Joining? They started it over 10 years ago…

Anonymous

I think he means the new form factors with capacitive touchscreens and simpler tablet OS.

Anonymous

Joining? They started it over 10 years ago…

Anonymous

Joining? They started it over 10 years ago…

Anonymous

I love demos where you can’t see the details…

Anonymous

I love demos where you can’t see the details…

Anonymous

I love demo’s where the person doing the demo has no clue about what he’s doing or how it works…

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Pshaw! Admit it, you both love it really.

Anonymous

Well, if anything Sebastian, at least always good for a laugh.

But seriously, would it have killed you to maybe take ten minutes and rehearse with the damn thing before your started filming?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Yep, I don’t disagree. There’s more to this video than what you see, though.

Basically, the original idea was to do a completely fresh video, one take, of me taking it out of the box and powering it up.

That didn’t really work out (the first-boot takes a long time), and the device had to be configured before it could access the ‘net (I was at a hotel… had to key in some voucher code, etc.)

Then there was some embargo stuff that screwed with my timings…

And then, by the end of all that, I didn’t have enough time to do another take — there was no bandwidth at the hotel, and my laptop can’t encode very quickly.

Anyway… there ya go. Too much info. In short: working away from home sucks.

http://profiles.google.com/khimera2000 Jonathan Freeman

I like the look of win8, here’s hoping that it comes out well. Any news on when you might see code running on ARM?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q2GH4UR5EY772DMGCHFU37FRN4 A

Any news forthcoming about the price and delivery date?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Sadly not. Windows 8 itself is some way away (though you can download the Developer Preview now). The tablet is a Samsung thing that will be released soon — but with Windows 7, not Windows 8. I think it’ll be around $1300.

Anonymous

I hope the $1,300.00 price was a mistate or joke. Also why Intel? I always thought AMD chips use less power.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5FW7SMMBKLLFTKXEEM3KI3NK7M Angryhippy

It doesn’t matter if it was a mistake or a joke. I would still be laughing my butt off. It might just be an early adopter price, so someone could cry in their beer when it gets cut in half (price wise), and go into a tirade about how evil MS is.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

re: price — this is an Intel Core i5 computer…! In an ultra-thin form factor!

I’m sure there will be cheaper tablets at launch. ARM is a popular platform for smartphones and tablets for a reason — it’s cheap!

Anonymous

While I agree the price has to be considered with i5 chip in mind, at the same time, the i5 powered samsung tablet doesn’t seem that powerful at all with windows 8 on it. Sure, it may be more powerful and full-er featured “computer” than other tablets, but sluggishness would be a crippling shortcoming.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q2GH4UR5EY772DMGCHFU37FRN4 A

Any forthcoming info about price and delivery?

Anonymous

Eh. Tablets. Everything you can do you on your phone, but bigger, heavier and more expensive.

Jack McGuire

??? a windows 8 tablet allows you to do everything on your pc mate, its the same operating system!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1259831620 Jaime Cervantes

Very true. :)

http://twitter.com/kmslogic Kelly Stanonik

With proper deference to Sebastian being a first (or first-few) time user I’m not overly impressed by the intuitiveness of the Metro interface…

Anonymous

While it was difficult to see everything, I think I saw enough to see that Metro will be fairly intuitive. At 900 grams, it also looked like Samsung chose the right form factor. I hope that Samsung can be docked so I can use it with an external keyboard, mouse, monitor and go from desktop to hammock and back again without too much fooling around. This device is just screaming for a case that opens and allows the device to be used as a conventional laptop!

Anonymous

It’s taking forever to open an app…with i5 ???

Tai Yuen Wong

It’s likely the worse video demo that I’ve ever seen. The presenter waa not quite familiar and cannot the handle the machine properly.

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